


Tipping the Scales

by crygooey



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale's Bookshop (Good Omens), Comfort, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Injuries, Post-Apocalypse, Snake Crowley (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-07-27 18:41:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20050729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crygooey/pseuds/crygooey
Summary: “Care to tell me why you’re biting people and making a mess of my books?”In which Aziraphale helps Crowley shed.





	Tipping the Scales

The bookshop was warmer than it had ever been.

Not temperature-wise, not really. Though the Notpocalypse had brought about such pleasant summer weather that it was almost a crime to be staying indoors. No, the bookshop was warm with a feeling Aziraphale knew quite well; a tingle in his very core that he could sense a mile away.

Love. Good, old-fashioned love.

Newt and Anathema had come for a visit, and had also stayed the night (to Crowley’s displeasure) since the trip from Tadfield was quite far and because, oh, they had much to speak about now that the Earth was right again!

Well, nearly right.

Crowley himself was coming off a bit harsher than usual, and sleeping more. Perhaps, Aziraphale thought, the Apocawasn't had worn him thin. It made sense, considering the angel himself was also a bit drained from the affair. Their two guests kept their distance from the demon—wary, yet trying hard not to appear so—but Aziraphale went on as usual. If there was a problem, he’d best not pry. Not unless it was absolutely necessary.

Crowley would come to him in his own time. Hopefully, while their guests were still around. They deserved to know the good side of him.

The physical warmth of the bookshop, on the other hand, was indeed coming from the morning sunlight through the windows, catching more dust than necessary in their bright streams. An angel sighed warmly, in his warm bed, with warm blankets, and warm clothes.

The only thing bugging him about this warmth, really, was the rather cold spot beside him. Crowley may be cold-blooded, but this was just ridiculous.

Aziraphale turned over.

The other half of the bed was empty.

The events following this were in such rapid succession that an angel turning over in his bed may just as well have been an omen of chaos.

There was, in precise order, a crash, a thump, a hiss, and a yell.

Aziraphale bolted upright, hoping that an angel sitting up in bed wouldn’t cause any more trouble than an angel turning in one did. He miracled on his day clothes and hurried to see if he wasn’t too late.

* * *

Downstairs, Anathema was cradling a coffee mug and looking just a tad disturbed. It should be noted that she, like Aziraphale, was also already fully dressed in all her daily layers. Newt, however, was not. He stumbled out of the bookshop’s back room in nothing but a tank top, boxers, and a pair of mismatched socks, as well as a particularly reddening spot on his left calf.

“Good morning. What on Earth was all that?” Aziraphale said to both of them.

Newt, face scrunched, dropped himself down on a surprisingly sturdy stack of books. Aziraphale’s face scrunched, too, but he kept his disdain in. For now.

“I don’t know if you know this,” Newt huffed, “but there’s a snake in your bookshop.”

“Oh,” said Aziraphale. Judging by what these humans had already seen—an Angel and a Demon, a total of four Horsemen, and the Devil himself, among other things—they should be fine to know about this one, too. Or, at least, they didn’t really have a choice. “Yes, that would be Crowley.”

“He’s a _snake_?” said Newt, raising both his eyebrows and his swollen leg. “Well, that explains a lot.”

A rather aggressive hiss was heard from the back.

“...Explains why he bit me, I mean! He was acting awfully... Well, awful.”

“He _bit_ you?” Aziraphale said aghast, moving closer to inspect the reddening spot. With careful hands, he slowly mended flesh and bone.

“Er, yeah. I heard something falling over, so I came to check and, well. I mean.” He scratched his cheek bashfully. “It probably didn’t help that I’d stepped on him.”

Aziraphale sighed. “That’s still no excuse to bite someone! Especially not guests.” He was likely speaking more to the snake in the other room than to the humans in this one. 

Anathema, who had been quiet through the exchange, spoke up.

“I hope he’s okay,” she said, also likely speaking more of the snake than her fellow human. “He seemed a bit... off. His aura was all over the place last night.”

Crowley did seem a bit all over the place, Aziraphale nodded, but didn't voice the thought aloud. Anathema stretched, and placed her now empty cup gratefully in Aziraphale’s courteously waiting hands. “Still, thanks for letting us come over here. It was a pleasure.”

Newt mumbled something under his breath while looking down at his now fully healed leg, which earned him a shoulderful of Anathema's elbow. Before Newt could get another word in, she was dragging him up the stairs to get the rest of his clothes on.

“Thank you for visiting!” Aziraphale called after them when they were leaving the shop, with the warm and sincere smile only he was capable of giving. “Ah, young love,” he said dreamily after they’d gone. “So naïve.”

Now, onto his. Quite a few thumps and thuds had been heard in the back room as Anathema and Newt were leaving. Aziraphale finally went in to assess the damage.

As he’d thought, judging by the sounds, there were quite a few books that had lost their place on their shelves and stacks in favour of being on the floor. Mostly his lesser prophecy books, thankfully, though he figured Crowley wasn’t exactly picking and choosing which books were worthy of knocking over. Aziraphale’s eyes skimmed the room and there, yes, right there, in the corner, curled in on himself and covered in a few scattered pages, was his serpent.

“What’s the matter, darling?” Aziraphale said softly, crossing the room.

A low hiss, and then a rather aggressive thump of a large black tail hitting the floor, which caused a few more pages and books to fly. Aziraphale stepped ever closer, not the least bit intimidated by the display.

“Care to tell me why you’re biting people and making a mess of my books?”

If Crowley were a snake of the rattle variety, his tail would be shaking harder than a maraca at a fiesta.

At Aziraphale’s approach, he poised up to strike, giving Aziraphale a particularly fierce hiss, mouth wide and fangs out in all their glory. Again, his tail thumped hard on the wood—both in frustration and, perhaps, in the kind of defensive manner a guilty party would use to try and hide their wrongdoings.

“Well now, that’s just not necessary,” Aziraphale hummed. Now that he could see him better, Crowley's eyes, Aziraphale noted, were a milky blue.

Ah. So it was that time at last.

“Crowley, dear, I really do wish you’d have told me sooner,” Aziraphale murmured, though it was currently quite difficult holding a proper conversation with a snake who would rather use his fangs than his words.

At arm’s length now, Aziraphale could see the scales flaking around Crowley’s eyes and nose. Crowley hadn’t budged, still poised and hissing, and Aziraphale closed the distance between them with his fingers, gently and softly stroking the scales between his eyes. It was quite like petting an aggressive Chihuahua, muzzle all taut and scrunched, fangs bared and ready to sink into flesh.

Except there were no fangs sinking into flesh, because this was Crowley, and he was Aziraphale.

“Relax, you old serpent. They’ve gone now.”

And that’s quite what Crowley did. The fangs hid away, and the scales under Aziraphale’s fingers softened. His eyes might have softened, too, if Aziraphale could see them.

“Can I help with anything?” Aziraphale asked, still smoothing the scales. “I can’t say I’ve ever helped with this sort of thing before, but I’m here if you need me.”

Crowley, unspeaking, thumped his tail yet again. No books or pages went flying this time. Without really leaving his spot, he nosed the corner of a bookshelf, and rubbed roughly against it. The skin there seemed particularly dry and flaky, and looked like it bothered him considerably.

Aziraphale may have done some research in the millennia that he’s known about his friend’s snakiness. It was quite a while ago, but the book on snakes was on that very bookshelf, staring him down and reminding him of all his prior preparation for this very moment.

“Not too rough, you might hurt yourself,” Aziraphale tutted, though he was sure Crowley knew what he was doing. How many times had he done this before? Hundreds, thousands of times? Though this time was different, because he wasn’t alone. He may have actually had too many with him this time around, but that had been taken care of. He wasn’t alone.

“Hold on, I’ll be right back.”

Aziraphale usually didn’t appreciate water being so close to such ancient pages, but in this case he’d have to excuse it. He had no choice, for Crowley refused to leave the corner. Aziraphale sprayed the snake with a water mister, not unlike the one Crowley used to tend to his own plants. (It was, after all, the best on the market.)

Crowley, blinded, hissed and twisted at the sound and the contact, but relaxed when he felt the drops on his itching scales and was both pleased and relieved to find that it didn’t burn him. He tried the bookshelf again, and the skin ravelled downward a bit. His face, too, was a bit less flaky. Aziraphale smiled at the progress.

“That’s it, you’re getting there,” he soothed. The process went on for nearly an hour, Aziraphale wetting his scales and Crowley shimmying out of them, until the skin, light and empty, was in a coil on the floor. Aziraphale felt the urge to keep it, though he thought Crowley might find that weird. And embarrassing.

“Oh, look at you!” Aziraphale cooed at Crowley’s new, sleek and vibrant body. He was happy to look into the fire-yellow eyes once again. He ran a gentle finger along the fresh black scales. “Absolutely gorgeous, my dear.”

There was a hissing sigh, and then a pop, and suddenly Aziraphale’s roaming finger was on Crowley's now human hip. He removed it, but only after letting it linger just a moment. 

Crowley, from his spot on the floor, looked exhausted but relieved. His face scrunched at the dead coil of skin. He picked it up between two fingers.

“Ugh,” he said. “All that for this disgusting thing.”

He caught Aziraphale’s eye. He had that look again.

“No, angel. You can’t have it.”

“Wh--?! I don’t... Why would I want to do that?”

“Because. I know you. And I’m getting rid of it before I end up seeing it on the mantlepiece.”

The skin singed and burned between Crowley’s fingers until it was nothing more than ash.

Aziraphale pouted at him. Crowley sighed.

“Alright. Maybe next time, angel.”


End file.
